The Seattle Phonographers Union collectively weave together gathered field recordings in real-time to create wafting auditory mirages. As each piece hovers through different combinations of environmental sounds, a milky, dreamlike logic unfolds and establishes a certain gestural rhythm. Hallucinatory aural images coalesce and then dissipate as sound combinations wax and wane lazily. Initially, this surreal opaqueness is alluring, offering immersive soundscapes that slyly defy reality.
As this continues over the span of an entire disc, though, it soon begins to grow somewhat tiresome, despite the captivating mystery within each sequence of sound-images. There are plenty of rich textures, fascinating individual sounds, and clever collective decisions. The fidelity of each recording is extraordinarily high, lending a certain hyper-real quality to the disc. Yet the sense that you’re over and over again hearing cross-fades which segue into new material tends to wear on the listener and leaves one craving either more dynamism, a different structural approach, or even, at times, more stasis. This is occasionally alleviated by the appearance of more assertive sound fields that leave bolder, more vivid impressions—either due to their content, volume level, or placement.
Even though there is plenty to love about any given moment on the album, it lacks the requisite degree of momentum to sustain this listener’s attention.
